General Motors CEO: Lessons Learned from Mom

GM’s Dan Akerson at the Women in the Economy conference earlier this month.

Questions on gender at work can be like a Rorschach inkblot test: Different people look at the same pattern and see entirely different things. One of the many reasons is that attitudes are shaped by childhood experiences.

Women at GM hold 20% to 25% of the top 50 jobs, and four out of 12 directorships – unusually high numbers in the auto industry – and Akerson has extended the company’s track record on advancing women since becoming CEO in 2010. Asked why, Akerson said his stance isn’t “so much conscious, as a recognition of talent.”

Seeing his mother’s talent wasted when he was a child was a formative experience for Akerson. His mother Marguerite, a first-generation German immigrant, was a “real ambitious, talented, risk-oriented women,” Akerson said. But when she started working for pay when Akerson was 11 years old, the best job she could get was a cashier position at a Piggly Wiggly grocery store for 65 cents an hour, working 48-hour weeks.

In 10 to 12 years on the job, she never was allowed to rise above assistant manager. “She should have been the manager,” Akerson said. At his mother’s wake, decades later, his mother’s former Piggly Wiggly boss showed up at her wake and praised her work, he said.

The memory has had a lifelong impact on his attitudes and decisions as a manager; in such matters, Akerson says, “you are somewhat a captive of your past.”

Readers, did your parents’ jobs or roles at home shape your view of gender issues and roles in the workplace? If so, how?

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Written and edited by The Wall Street Journal’s Management & Careers group, At Work covers life on the job, from getting ahead to managing staff to finding passion and purpose in the office. Tips, questions? email us.